Processing pictorial (image) and/or video digital data can be both computationally intensive and consume large amounts of data storage. For many communication devices (e.g., mobile phones) having capabilities for generating digital images (photos) and/or videos, these devices have processing and/or storage capacities that are insufficient to appropriately wholly reside on the devices. Accordingly, it is desirable to store and in some cases at least partially process such image/video data at one or more central sites on a communications network wherein such sites have relatively large data processing and storage capacities. However, the network can be significantly degraded if large numbers of network users transmit image/video data to such central network sites due to the corresponding high data volume image/video data that may be transmitted on the network. Accordingly, one solution would be to limit the amount of image/video data that users transmit on the network, e.g., during a day, week or month. This solution has significant drawbacks in that network users increasingly believe that a “smart” telecommunications network should “intelligently” perform user network requests to the degree possible, and further that such requests should be performed without requiring the users to have relatively detailed knowledge of network communications.
Thus, to address the above problem, it is desirable to provide a more “intelligent” technique for managing and transmitting image/video data on a telecommunications network. In particular, it would be desirable to dynamically vary the amount of image/video data that users transmit on the network according to current network transmission characteristics, wherein such dynamic varying of network transmissions is performed substantially transparently to the users, and wherein the presentation or display quality of such image/video data can be substantially maintained.